Hardwood lumber (mostly, red oak, white oak and walnut) are used in the production of solid strip flooring (under 3″ wide) and plank flooring (3″ and wider), furniture components, wooden door and window productions and many more products by factories that use hardwood lumber. A majority of the wood that is used in this process is approximately one inch thick. The uses include:
Hardwood lumber (red oak, white oak, walnut, etc.) is used in production of: solid flooring in form of strip (typically 2-2¼″ wide) and plank (3″ and wider);
Engineered flooring is constructed with a top layer made from hardwood (about 3-6 mm thick) is glued to a bottom layer of plywood;
Furniture components;
Door, window and cabinets production;
Moulding production, as well as many more wood product applications.
The first step in the production of such hardwood products typically is a ripping of kiln-dried random wide boards lumber into a strip of a specified width. These kiln-dried hardwood boards are typically not uniform in width and include various imperfections on their edges such as vein, bark, cracks, splits and other defects. These imperfections need to be removed as a result of the ripping operation.
In the manufacture of these products, the unused portion of the lumber boards represents a significant percentage of the total amount of the wood (e.g., between ten percent thirty percent (10%-30%). The unused pieces are between three fourths to two inches wide and either stored at manufacturing facilities for various purposes, or alternatively, dumped as a waste or burned. Such unused hardwood lumber waste through the country amounts to many millions of board feet of wood, creating a huge environmental problem and an economical problem.